STET CAPJTOLIUM PULGENS. 



INAUGURATION 



OF 



THE STATE CAPITOL 

AT 

DES MOINES, IOWA, 

ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE TWENTIETH GENERAL 

ASSEMBLY BY 

Hon. JOHN A. KASSON, 

UPON INVITATION OF THE GOVERNOR AND GENERAL ^ASSEMBLY, 

JANUARY 17, 1884. 



\ 

PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLT. 



DES MOINES: 

GEO. E. ROBERTS, STATE PRINTER. 

1884. 



F^i^^ 



'-n 



z 



JUL 7 im 
Pi ot 0. 



THE NEW OAPITOL. 



■Gentlemen of the General Assembly^ Officers of State, and Fellow 
Citizens : 
For the people of Iowa, and especially for you, their representatives 
in the Executive, Legislative and Judicial departments, this day 
may well be devoted to congratulations. The people will rejoice 
that this great structure, now so near completion, has been erected 
with economy, honesty, and sound judgment, and without special taxa- 
tion, or debt. Their representatives rejoice that they can now enter 
into appropriate halls with abundance of heaven's pure air and clear 
light, and with suitable chambers for the important work of their 
committees. Their Executive and Judicial oflScers have special rea- 
son to be glad that they are soon to leave the inconvenient and inse- 
cure quarters hitherto assigned them, for the safe and spacious rooms 
where fire cannot destroy, where thieves cannot easily break through 
and steal, and where moth and rust are far less likely to corrupt. 
AH our people, in public or in private life, will to-day experience pro- 
found gratification that all the high authorities of government, the 
■elect of their suffrage, enter in their name into the possession of a State 
House befitting the intelligence and the wealth, the dignity and the 
• worth of a State which is justly proud of her record of good govern- 
ment. It is the third time that the State has taken possession of a 
Capitol building. As the immigrating farmer willingly passes his 
'first difficult years in a cabin of logs, and when his family is better 
grown, and the tide of steady prosperity has enriched him, erects a 



4 THE NEW CAPITOL. 

substantial dwelling in which, as he hopes, his children, and their 
children after them, may preserve his name and virtues in lasting 
memory, so Iowa, passing from her earlier official cabins, has devoted 
a part of her increasing wealth to the erection of this enduring man- 
sion for the residence of her elected government during generations 
to come. 

Our first prayer beneath this high dome is, that here the moral and 
political foundations of this imperial State may be so deeply and so 
wisely laid that remote generations shall recall and celebrate the 
wisdom and the virtues of their ancestors who in the nineteenth cen- 
tury erected and occupied this solid mansion of the State. 

It is for us all a source of profound gratification that from the day 
when the present Commissioners assumed control, with their accom- 
plished Superintendent of Construction, the legislative bodies have 
never withdrawn from them their confidence. Not one act of specu- 
lation or spoliation, not one coin wasted or vainly spent, has defaced 
the bright record of their administration. It shall be a part of the 
legacy we leave to our children that all these vast and durable walls 
have been laid in the cement of honesty, and built by the rule of 
fidelity. More proud of this legend are we, than of all these classic 
columns and brilliant domes which please the eye and gratify the 

taste. 

As this house of the government has been .erected in integrity, 
without turmoil or disorder, so may neither corruption nor violence 
ever appear within its chambers. Let nothing be ever here trans- 
acted against patriotism, religion, morality or education, nor against 
the just principles of civil liberty, or public or private right. As the 
wheels of time roll on, as generations of men arise, act their part, 
and decay, may each generation represented in these halls leave to 
its posterity a newly enriched inheritance of order, liberty, and jus- 
tice. Let us cherish the hope that for centuries to come the eyes of 
happy Industry shall see with joy the beams of the rising day play- 



ADDRESS. 5 

ing upon these bright domes; and that there also, well-rewarded La- 
•bor may look with contentment upon the rays of the declining sun, 
when the evening hour brings its welcome repose to toil. 

This noble Capitol to-day becomes a monument between two eras 
in the history of Iowa, dividing the frontier transitory record of the 
State from its grander history begun with the census of 1880. The 
past of our State presents a brief record which is within the mem- 
ory of living men. No misty traditions of antiquity have either 
obscured or illuminated our course. We have lived chiefly in our 
.anticipated future, to which we have sought to give form and reality. 
When the bell of Independence Hall rang out the peal of Liberty in 
1776, Iowa was unknown, except as a land whose borders had been 
•discovered by the French. When Spain ceded the region to Napo- 
leon, and Napoleon in turn ceded it to the United States in 1803, it 
was still unexplored, unknown, and nameless. First attached in 1804, 
ainder the name of the "District of Louisiana," to the jurisdiction 
of the Territory of Indiana, it became, in 1805, part of the Territory 
of Louisiana, and in 1812, by change of name, part of the Territory 
of Missouri. In 1834 all the country north of the State of Missouri 
And west of the Mississippi river, as far as the Missouri and White 
Earth rivers, was attached to the Territory of Michigan. Two years 
later, in 1836, Wisconsin Territory was created, and embraced all 
that had so lately been transferred to the jurisdiction of Michigan. 
After two years more, in 1838, the Territory of Iowa was estab- 
lished, including what are now the States of Iowa and Minne- 
sota and a large section of Dakota. Seven years later, in 1845, 
•Congress offered to admit us as a State by the side of Florida, 
on certain conditions, which established our western boundary at 
longitude 17 degrees, 30 minutes west of Washington, separating 
from us the entire Missouri " slope.'' This our people wisely 
refused; and finally, in December, 1846, Congress extended our 



g THE NEW CAPITOL. 

western boundary to the proper limit of the Missouri river, and 
Iowa became one of these United States. Thus, only thirty-seven 
years ago, Iowa with 130,000 people and two representatives 
became a member of this great Union of States, which she now 
supports with nearly two millions of loyal people, with eleven 
representatives in Congress, with over 21,000 school-houses, more 
than 22,000 teachers, and 464,000 pupils; and with a greater pro- 
portion of her people able to read than is shown by any other State 
of the Union. 

This record becomes the more notable when it is remembered 
that the very hill upon which this Capitol stands, and all the valleys 
and plains for many leagues around, were forty years ago in the 
occupation of the aboriginal tribes. All this fair domain between 
the two great rivers of the continent was in the possession of roving^ 
or resident tribes until 1830. In that year the relinquishment of the 
Indian title began by a treaty which covered, with ill-defined bound- 
aries, all the region west of the divide between the Des Moines and 
Missouri rivers, as far north as the forks of the Des Moines river,, 
and thence westward, taking in the valleys of the Boyer, Little Sioux,. 
and Floyd rivers, to which was added a strip extending northeast- 
ward to the Mississippi river. These concessions were made by the 
loways, Otoes, Omahas, Missourias, Sacs and Foxes, and four bands- 
of Sioux, all of whom claimed rights in the districts relinquished tO' 
the United States. The Sioux separately ceded a strip of territory 
twenty miles wide running from the Mississippi liver below La 
Crosse southwesterly to the Des Moines river, on which cession are 
now found the towns of Cresco, Osage, Charles City, and others as- 
far as Dakotah City, The Sacs and Foxes ceded a like strip imme- 
diately adjoining it on the south, on which are now many towns,, 
embracing Waukon, West Union, Postville, and others to Fort 
Dodge. This double concession, forty miles in width, formed a 
neutral zone between alie^ tribes. All of Iowa north of these con- 



ADDRESS. 7 

cessions was claimed by different bands of the Sioux until 1851, when 
their relinquishment was obtained. But these first concessions in 
1830 seem to have been made not so much in the interest of the 
whites as to preveht wars among the Indian tribes, disputing their 
respective rights to that territory. The advancing tide of immigra- 
tion, however, was by this time ready to cross our great Mediterra^ 
nean river, and open up the country on its western bank. The Sacs 
and Foxes yielded to its demands, and in 1832 gave to white settle- 
ment a district equal to two or three tiers of counties up and down 
the Mississippi. Again, in 1837, they yielded to further pressure, 
and gave up one and a quarter million of acres along the Cedar and 
Iowa rivers, including their chief's, Keokuk's, village. This still left 
all central Iowa south of Fort Dodge and as far west as the Mis- 
souM water-shed, in possession of the allied tribes, who numbered, all 
told, about two thousand two hundred and fifty souls. But the 
friendly character of these red men had given opportunity to the 
whites to hear of these clear skies, this fruitful soil, and these 
wooded streams, and even to see these lands of promise, and so to 
covet them. Under the influence of the progressive human tide 
pressing on from the east, in 1842 they finally threw themselves into 
the arms of the Federal Government to choose for them a new home 
further west; and agreed to surrender all their immemorial heritage 
in three years from that time. When, at midnight following the 
eleventh day of October, 1845, the signal gun from Fort Des Moines, 
on yonder point, announced the end of all aboriginal right, the last 
of these faithful tribes had left their ancestral grounds forever, and 
the complicated law of the white man succeeded to the simple usages 
of the native tribes. And so was the very ground now covered by 
the shadow of these walls transferred from the dominion of Asiatic 
tribal organization to the control of our European Christian civiliza- 
tion. 



g THE NEW CAPITOL. ' 

These tribes of Sacs and Foxes were among the best Indians of 
their race. The testimony of our frontiersmen, and the official rec- 
oids of the Government describe them as thoroughly entitled to the 
respect of our race. The United States agent at the Raccoon 
Agency, just before their ^migration, attributes to them "the manly 
virtues and innate principles of honor and honesty." After their 
migration, the agent speaks in his reports of their "fidelity and re- 
gard for truth, their sense of honor and honesty, and pride of per- 
son and Nation." It should be told to our children that these sons 
of the soil to whom we have succeeded left behind them a noble 
name for manly virtues which we may well desire to emulate. 
AVould that my voice might reach them now with these words of 
praise; and that they might be consoled for the loss of this Eden- 
land of their ancient possession by knowing that the ground over 
■\yhich they roamed to find food for little more than two thousand 
Bouls, now gives home and food to near two million souls, under the 
protection of the same Great Spirit who rules both them and us. 

Those of us who have known the liberal pleasures as well as the 
struggles of the spacious frontier life, the invigorating contests with 
wild nature and'wilder beasts, the simpler manly virtues which it de- 
velops, the self-reliance, personal independence and courage which 
spring spontaneous from it, may well indulge a feeling of sympathy 
in the passing away of those tribes who had for centuries enjoyed 
that life along these running waters, under the shade of these oaks 
and walnuts, and over these blossoming prairies, where some of us 
oTice wandered with gun and fishing-rod in the days that have fled 
with the game. Shall the restless and eager life of the white man 
be sweeter than the life of the peaceful savage whom we have dis 
placed— savage only to his enemies? Shall our greed of wealth be 
more profitable to the human soul than his greed of game? Shall 
truer virtue be found in our speculating marts of trade and in our 



ADDRESS. 9 

crowded bins and stockyards, than that which was nourished in the 
the sheltered tents of the red men, and under the influence of the 
brilliant heavens that beamed over their unplowed prairies? Shall 
the means of personal happiness, now far removed from the simplici- 
ties of nature, be more fruitful for us than they were for them as 
they reposed on the very breast of Nature? Let the philosopher 
who shall live at the close of the twentieth century answer these 
questions. 

As the Indian with bow and arrow disappeared in the west, the 
frontiersmen advanced from the east with axe and plow. They 
gathered around the meeting of the rivers in this valley, and be- 
lieved they could see even then the dawning aurora of a bril- 
liant future. They eagerly expected the rising sun of prosperity. 
But oh, the weary waiting for its coming! The cold blasts of 
winter, the overfloodings of the streams in spring, the unsold 
harvests of the autumn, the tedious roads to market, the hope- 
less improvement of navigation, the tired expectancy of promised 
railways! Old settlers of Central Iowa, you remember the years 
that seemed decades, the decade that seemed a century. But we 
now hail the risen sun. The long expected time of prosperity 
has come. Instead of struggling wains, dragged by worn beasts 
over miring roads and across swollen streams, there now depart 
each day from beneath the shadow of this Capitol eighty trains of 
cars, propelled by a tireless power, and laden with busy men, or 
with the wealth of State and Nation, over iron ways radiating to all 
points of the compass, directed to the interior of a continent or to 
the shores of two oceans, and to markets in foreign lands. Instead 
of dangerous fords, iron bridges span our streams. Tall groves and 
houses of comfort defy the wintry blasts of our prairies. Churches 
and school-houses illuminate the country and beautify the towns. 
The joy of this time would be complete if it had pleased Heaven to 



10 THE NEW CAPITOL. 

spare the lives of all our hardy pioneers to see this day. They were 
the daring scouts of civilization — these early settlers who bore the 
severest hardships of the struggle, and opened the way for the hap- 
pier multitude who now enjoy the ripened fruits of their planting. 
All hail to the memory of these departed, and a living welcome to 
you who survive! May Heaven long preserve you in the well-earned 
comfort of your declining years. 

Taking leave of our past, what shall be our future in the history of 
the Republic? Shall we grow into a powerful member of this great 
Union of States, or bury ourselves in the fatness of our fruitful 
fields and populous pastures? The real facts which most concern 
our personal comfort and happiness are undoubtedly those which 
have for their scene our hearths, our farms, our churches, schools, 
and workshops. But these are rarely gathered up by the pen of 
history. It is the larger community, the State, which embodies the 
resulting character of all this local training; the State, which has its 
own rooftree and hearthstone, preserves its own records, and de- 
velops a character of its own; — it is the State which passes into 
history, and by its perpetual record conveys to posterity the impres- 
sions which they shall entertain of their ancestors. The Legislature 
of the little emigrant colony of Plymouth, over two hundred years 
ago, declared: "Forasmuch as the maintenance of good literature 
doth much tend to the advancement of the weal and flourishing 
state of societies and republics, this court doth, therefore, order that 
in whatever township in this government, consisting of tifty families 
or upwards, any meet man shall be obtained to teach a grammar 
school, said township shall allow at least twelve pounds to be raised 
by rate on all the inhabitants." While we know little of the men 
who thus resolved, of their names, mode of living, or conditions, 
this noble record of their devotion to education has illuminated all 
the later pages of the history of Massachusetts. Three states of 



ADDRESS. 1 ] 

this Union maintained for two generations a character among their 
sister states as individual and distinct as that of an eminent man 
among his associates. In proportion as the traits of State character 
are more marked and resolute, the longer they endure. The influx of 
new elements among the masses of population in many of our States 
has subjected this character to modifications, until even the family 
likeness is in some cases dangerously near to disappearance. Our 
Northwestern States are so miscellaneously settled, and are still so 
young, that no artist can yet venture to draw a portrait which will 
be recognized as faithful a half century hence. But for the last 
quarter of a century the pulses of Iowa, and her impulses, have been 
so thoroughly felt, her tendencies and the influences working in her 
development are so clearly shown, as to justify the indulgence of 
a noble hope of her future. Her liberality in the support of schools, 
and of religious and charitable institutions, the superiority of her 
people in the comparative; tables of popular education, the more 
equal diffusion of wealth and comfort within her borders, her un- 
questioned love of liberty, temperance, and justice, and her mili- 
tary and civil courage in their maintenance, so distinguish her as 
to lend a halo to the brightest Dromise of coming history . 

The dangerous influences which threaten to defeat [this promise 
are visible, and demand your vigorous activity to suppress them. 
The State will rise no higher than the motives and the intellect of 
the men who in all ranks most prominentlv ropresent it. If you 
allow your offices to be sold as patronage, or claimed as a personal 
right, and fill them in response to personal solicitation, or party dic- 
tation, without regardi;to'^fitness, you fail in your duty;' to the State. 
If you listen to demagogues who appeal to prejudice against meas- 
ures of justice, who defame the character of your elected officers to 
gratify malice or to obtain office for themselves, you prepare the 
way for the degradation of all public life, and for the humiliation of 



12 THE NEW CAPITOL. 

the State itself. Some new Peter-the-herrait will yet arise among 
the people to preach a new crusade against the system of falsehood, 
forgery and defamation, which are still tolerated as weapons of 
political warfare. Let your curse rest upon them, and your heel 
■crush them out. They degrade us in the eyes of all foreign nations, 
and they insult the purity and patriotism of our own people. As 
your vengeance should be swift upon those who are proved corrupt, 
so let it fall with the speed of a thunderbolt iipon the forgers and 
libellers who fear not to corrupt the public mind with falsehood, 
and defame the reputation of the State and Nation by reckless 
.assaults upon their representative officers. 

Let your indignation also flow in full tide against the corrupters 
of the ballot box. Our laws are not yet severe enough against these 
enemies of the Republic. Tricks and deceptions which rob the 
voter of his sovereign right are not adequately punished. Fraudu- 
lent tickets are repeatedly delivered to the ignorant and unwary. 
And yet a single vote has been known to shape the policy of a State. 
The ballot is the crown of popular sovereignty, and it should be 
guarded with , a care like that bestowed upon the jeweled emblem 
with which kings go to their coronation. 

What influence will the five hundred and seventy periodical 
presses of Iowa exert upon the future character of our State? What 
will this enormous power for good or evil do to form the reputation 
and build up an honorable name and fame for our home Republic? 
Shall their columns be filled with a mixture of good and evil, of 
truth and falsehood, that they may thrive by ministering to all 
■depraved as well as elevated tastes? The preaching of your 
churches and the teaching of your schools will be robbed of half 
their educational force, if the press fails to contribute its share to 
the elevation of public sentiment. The hurried demand of ^the 
daily page upon overtaxed brains leads too often to recklessness of 



ADDRESS. 13. 

assertion, to viciousness of argument, and even to the invention of 
facts, while verification of their statements awaits the leisure of 
their author. Meanwhile the public mind is led astray, and public 
opinion in part corrupted. The great majority of their issues, it is 
willingly believed, are useful instructors among the moral forces of 
the community. But from this central hearthstone of the State we 
to-day invoke them all to recognize a higher responsibility to truth 
and justice, a more thorough emancipation from prejudice of party 
and of person, and a deeper appreciation of their influence upon 
the destinies of Iowa. 

Formidable social and economic questions have in recent years 
risen in the political horizon, to which we direct our troubled gaze 
as we should look at some unknown comet stretching across the 
heavens. The simpler manners and the greater equality of fortunes 
have passed away. The progress of our race in this nineteenth cen- 
tury has been so rapid, and signal discoveries of science occur so fre- 
quently, that when we pause to look backward along the line of our 
own advance we are tilled with astonishment. The venerable man of 
four score years who may listen here to-day knew a time when no 
boat was propelled by steam; while now all great seas and all inland 
waters ai'e vexed by their ceaseless wheels. The mature man of three 
score years knew a time when no vehicle for freight or passengers 
moved rapidly on iron rails, governed by an unseen force; while now 
their noise disturbs the tranquility of two continents. Men of still 
more vigorous years know a time when electricity was an unchained 
force; while now, subjected to our use, messages are instantaneously 
transmitted by it thousands of miles over land and under seas, 
annihilating time and outspeeding the coursers of the sun. The boy 
still at school, with satchel slung upon his shoulders, remembers the 
time when the human voice was lost at a short radius in the atmos- 
phere; where now it travels, guided by a delicate wire, for scores of 



14 THE NEW CAPITOL 

miles, and speaks gently in the ear which listens, even beyond the 
horizon of the human eye. Such events, so strange, so wonderful, 
occurring within our own time, surpass the imaginative compass of 
an Arab story, and fill us with awe and amazement. Unable to fore- 
cast the productive future, we tremble as its opening scenes are dis- 
played to our bewildered sight. We ask what is to be the effect of 
the enormous accumulations of wealth rendered possible by the 
numerous amazing inventions of man? What shall be the fate of 
Labor, which applies all these discoveries to the production of this 
vast wealth? Shall it share in the improvement of human conditions, 
or be left to retrogradation? Remembering that extreme wealth 
and extreme poverty are the two widely separated ends of the human 
chain, shall the great middle classes which so largely outnumber 
both the others, reconcile the rights of one with the interests of the 
other, and so maintain our peaceful development? These pregnant 
questions, gentlemen, will demand your unimpassioned thought for 
years to come, for they must in part be hereafter resolved by legis- 
lation within the halls of which you this day take possession. The 
country is feeling its way steadily toward their solution. Let Pa- ' 
tience be a welcome guest at your deliberations, and let Justice con- i 
trol them. For Justice is the richest jewel in the crown of govern ; 
ment — justice to the low, justice to the high, justice to all. Legisla- 
tion must not take away from industry, activity and extraordinary 
capacity the legitimate earnings of these superior qualities; for that 
would be to discourage the best labor, and to retard the advance of 
society. Nor, on the other hand, must it give to superior faculty such 
advantages as will enable it to oppress humbler natures, or deprive 
them of their fair protection, and their fitting share in the world's 
advance. The just principle must be found upon which proper social 
legislation shall be based. It may possibly be recognized by analogy 
to the care bestowed by governments upon those in its militaiy ser- 



ADDRESS. 1 5 

vice who are wounded or diseased in the line of duty. It may be 
found in the compulsory and regular contribution from the profits of 
the enterprise to a beneficial fund; or in the principles of an insur- 
ance association. Voluntary efforts of enlightened wealth are already 
opening the way, and blazing the path of future legislation. The 
principles of justice, reinforced by the sentiment of Christianity, will 
surely lead our fair-minded countrymen to the settlement of these 
questions without the violence and disorder which are so dangerously 
distracting the older nations of Europe. 

We, gentlemen, shall soon pass from the stage of public action. 
The hope of the country will soon pass to the next generation. The 
fair flower of Iowa, now in her public schools or just leaping the 
fences into political life, will claim the control of the destinies of the 
State. I appeal to them to avoid the common road which leads 
through the passions and prejudices of men; and to choose the path 
which demands higher courage, but which leads assuredly to an hon- 
orable fame. The generosity of their years should easily lead them 
to resist the despotism of the strong, as well as to scorn the ways of 
the demagogue. To gain greatness for themselves or for their State 
they must be guided by the nobler sentiments of the human heart 
and by the higher qualities of the human intellect. It is of the very 
nature of greatness that it represents these qualities, as it is devel- 
oped by them. But it is of the very nature of prejudice and passion 
that they cannot endure in leadership; they must die of the moral 
mephitic gasses which are evolved out of their own active heat. You 
may try to convert them to a better nature, but try not at all to build 
yourself upon them. They may make a Marat, who flooded a city 
with blood; but never a Napoleon, who curbed and conquered them, 
and organized an empire upon their fall. Truth alone is indestruct- 
ible. 

" The eternal years of God are hers," 

as well in politics as in religion. Truth and you together are 



IQ THE NEW CAPITOL. 

stronger than you and all the hosts of error in company. In a time 
of great passion and excitement John Milton wrote, "I care not 
what error is let loose into the field, so Truth be left free to combat 
it." One of the noblest things in this contest against popular error 
and prejudice on the one hand and against the prejudices of organ- 
ized wealth and position on the other, to which I summon the youth 
of Iowa, is found in the manly qualities of courage and personal 
independence which it evokes. Slaves of party and slaves of self 
interest and prejudice abound, and will threaten you with defeat 
if you take sides against them for public justice and public honor 
in times of difficulty. But the battle, though prolonged, is surely 
won in the end for truth and justice. It is not the skirmish, but 
the final victory, which wins the chaplet of immortality. We send 
these messages to-day from beneath this dome to the blossoming 
manhood of our State, now in university, college and schools, who 
shall soon occupy our places in this Capitol, and shall here direct the 
affairs and establish the fame of a greater State. 

One sentiment more demands expression under these arches as 
they are dedicated to future centuries. Need I say to you, men of 
Iowa, who have so recently and so bountifully given your treasure 
and your blood to maintain it, that the strongest hope of the future 
welfare of our State, under favor of the Almighty, is in the perpe- 
tuity of the National Union. In that well-rounded circle we dwell 
secure. Detached from that bond, a broken fragment, we should be 
the prey alike of internal faction and of faithless and transient 
external alliances. Jealousies of rivals on every side, obstructed 
intercourse, commercial exactions, and frontier broils, would impov- 
erish the people, excite their passions, and destroy their peace. In 
the end we should fall like the petty Republics of Greece under 
foreign domination, or like Rome seek relief from domestic faction 
in submission to a despot's rule The rallying cry of all patriots 



ADDRESS. 17 

must Btill be, the Constitution and the Union. The victories of 
war and the glories of peace, won under the common flag, must 
never be divided. May each generation transmit from these halls to 
its succeeding generation the watchword: Let the Union remain 
forever. When, in 1851, being the seventy-sixth year of our Inde- 
pendence, the corner-stone was laid for the extension of the United 
States Capitol, Mr. Webster deposited a memorial of the ceremony, 
in which he declared that if it should thereafter be the will of God 
that the structure should fall from its base and its foundations be 
upturned, that memorial should make it known that the Union of the 
States then stood firm, and the Constitution unimpaired, and grown 
stronger in the affections of the people than ever before. 

Standing to-day in this noble presence of all departments of the 
government. Legislative, Executive and Judicial, and of the people 
of the State, I would enlarge the lofty words of that great statesman. 
If it shall hereafter be the will of God that the pillars and domes, 
towers and walls of this great structure shall fall prostrate, and even 
its foundations be buried from the eyes of men, be it known that at 
this time, in the one hundred and eighth year of our Independence, 
the Union of the United States of America, having withstood the 
shock of two foreign wars, and of one more terrible civil war, still 
Btands firm, and more strongly consolidated than ever before, having 
been cemented by blood; that their Constitution still exists unim- 
paired, and even improved by the introduction of universal human 
liberty within its entire jurisdiction; and with more than its original 
usefulness and glory; that it grows every day stronger in the affec- 
tions of the great body of the American people, and attracts more 
and more the admiration of the world. And all here assembled, 
whether belonging to public or private life, with hearts devoutly 
thankful to Almighty God for the preservation of the liberty and the 



Ig THE NEW CAPITOL. 

happiness of the country, and for the great prosperity of the State, 
unite in sincere and fervent prayers that these walls and arches, 
domes and towers, columns and capitals, may endure so long as the 
Republic and Liberty survive. 



^ 



